DRAWN TO HISTORY

I think all of us who love history are drawn to certain times and places. Conversely, there are eras and locales that we instinctively shy away from for various reasons. We accumulate facts and details and are knowledgable about arcane bits of information that most people are completely unaware of.

For instance, if you have ever looked at dolls' hands, you may have wondered why they were molded the way they were, with the middle and ring fingers together and slightly curved inward toward the palm, while the index finger and pinkie were apart and mostly straight. Well, Godey's Lady's Book, the most popular magazine in America in the mid-1800's, had voluminous advice on how fashionable women carried themselves, whether seated, standing, or moving, right down to the way they held their hands. This position I've described was how one was supposed to hold one's hands while at rest. Dolls were designed to reflect the height of fashion, including the positioning of their hands and fingers, and that particular model has been in use right up until the present.

How do I know this? I read it in a book. Why do I remember it? Heaven only knows.

I tend to be drawn to times of hardship and rigor. I'm fascinated by historical tragedies of any kind, from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius to the Pilgrims' first year to the Donner party to the Titanic. I'm currently attracted to stories of America in the 1930s, especially the Dust Bowl and stories about how people made it through the Depression. My fascination with true crime makes this an interesting era for me, what with all the gangsters and Prohibition.

I also feel an affinity with Regency England. I don't know if it's something organic within me, or if it grew from constant exposure, because all the women in my family read Regency romances by the hundreds.

I don't gravitate toward brother-vs.-brother times of strife. I enjoy reading about the Civil War, but I don't enjoy Civil War romances, where the heroine is on one side of the conflict and the hero on the other. Those types of stories never resolve seamlessly for me, because the reconciliation of diametrically opposite beliefs doesn't ring true. Also, I guess it's natural, given how the war ended, but you rarely find stories where the protagonists are both Southern and everything ends well. Those are always tragic stories of loss and retribution.

Some chunks of English history are less interesting to me than others. I'm fascinated by the Tudors, the Victorians, and the Edwardians. I'll read about any era, really, but those are my three favorites.

Another thing that can pull me out of a historical novel is the use of accents. Ah do not lahk zee foreign ax-ahnts written out phonetically. (This is another reason why I don't like Civil War stories; I think it's a bit patronizing for modern white writers to try to approximate what they think slaves might have sounded like.) I guess I want it both ways. I want to know if the characters have accents or particular speech patterns, but I don't want to have to sound them out.

I admire the research that authors put into their writing. I love authors who respect their readers enough to validate their information and create a convincing universe in which their readers can immerse themselves. I remember being in a writing class in college, and one girl had written a historical romance. (Should I say "an" historical romance?) At first the professor seemed inclined to praise the story, but my friend and I began to point out the historical inaccuracies, much to the other girl's dismay. When the professor asked her why she had so many mistakes and anachronisms, she threw up her hands and wailed, "I didn't think anyone would notice!" A lot of my classmates were upset with us for being so mean to someone else (and causing her to get a less-than-wonderful grade), but even then, I took writing very seriously. Readers do not like to be patronized, and it bugged even then that this girl would assume that romance readers would be too stupid to catch her errors.

People who read history, even light historical fiction, take their reading seriously. They know their stuff. They want to be entertained by writers who also know their stuff.

GLOMMING AND BAD TITLES

The best thing about discovering a new author is glomming all their other books and immersing yourself in their writing, or re-discovering an old favorite, revisiting favorite titles, and catching up with their other titles.

When Jayne Ann Krentz was writing what I call her Alphabet Trilogies under her pseudonym Amanda Quick, I read them as fast as I could get my hands on them. I don't remember much about them now, and frankly, I found it very hard to remember specifics about each book because those titles (Mystique, Mischief, Mistress, Dangerous, Desire, Deception, Ravished, Reckless, etc.) didn't help me remember what they were about. I've thought about going back and re-reading them, and that's not out of the question, but there are so many books I have yet to read for a first time by authors I have yet to discover that I'm not necessarily willing to devote a lot of time to that many books I've already read.

Anyway, I hadn't read JAK for a while, except in her Jayne Castle persona, because I love her Harmony series. My aunt, Posey, and I talk books a lot, and she was telling me how hard it is to find JAK books secondhand, and I realized I had a few of her Arcane Society books. I hadn't realized that they tied in with the Harmony books. So I'm on my fourth JAK title in the past month, and I love that I'm just flying through it. I've begun to realize that sometimes my slow reading pace is a symptom of reading books I think I *should* read rather than reading what I know I'll love and enjoy.

When I first discovered Susan Elizabeth Phillips, it was the same thing--I read everything I could find by her. I recently re-read Dream a Little Dream, which is one of my favorites of hers, even though I'm not exactly sure what that title had to do with anything. And that leads me to a particular pet peeve: bad titles.

I used to read Harlequin romances all the time, and I didn't care who saw me reading them. I don't read them to speak of now, and the reason is quite simple: the titles are stupid and embarrassing. The Billionaire's Baby Bargain. The Sheikh's Secret Seduction. The Italian's Pregnant Mistress. These may or may not be actual titles, but you see where I'm going with this. For years I defended Harlequin as good story-telling with a wealth of opportunity for fledgling writers. Now I can't get past the titillating, newsstand headline titles of the books to read the stories inside. Harlequin's taken the genre backward about fifty years, and it's a terrible mistake. On the other hand, I guess if I were to read one of those books, I wouldn't have trouble remembering what the plot was.

I recently read Never Love a Lawman by Jo Goodman. I really enjoy her books, which are usually western historical romances, but the title of this one left me scratching my head, because it's one of those titles I'm talking about--it had nothing to do with the story, except that the hero was the town sheriff. The story was about a young woman who moves to a small western town to escape a villain. She keeps to herself for the most part, except for the fact that she's a dressmaker who designs clothing for the ladies of the town as well as for the ladies of the night. The town is open-minded about this because the ladies of the night were brought in to provide company for the bachelor miners, and many of them have married and become respectable. Anyway, the heroine and hero marry to meet the terms of the will of the young woman's benefactor, who had once been a friend of her father's. So, does anything here relate to "Never Love a Lawman?" I didn't think so, either.

Authors don't get much say in naming their books, but I'm pretty sure I'd have trouble accepting a title that didn't have anything to do with my story.

THE BOOKS OF 2009

JANUARY
The Last Book in the Universe--Rodman Philbrick
Dracula--Bram Stoker, read by Susan Adams and Alexander Spencer
Sundays at Tiffany's--James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet
The Outlaw Demon Wails--Kim Harrison
And Baby Makes Six--Linda Markowiak
Lucy Gets Her Life Back--Stef Ann Holm
Lean Mean Thirteen--Janet Evanovich
Peace Like a River--Elaine Schulte
Maida's Little Shop--Inez Haynes Irwin (ebook)
Plum Lucky--Janet Evanovich
The Pagan Stone--Nora Roberts
A Cedar Cove Christmas--Debbie Macomber
Worth More Dead--Ann Rule

FEBRUARY
Just Between Friends--Sandra Steffen
The Great GIlly Hopkins--Katherine Paterson
Snowy Night with a Stranger--Jane Feather, Sabrina Jeffries, Julia London
To the Brink--Cindy Gerard
Christmas, Present--Jacquelyn Mitchard
The Prophet of Yonwood--Jeanne DuPrau
Seduce Me at Sunrise--Lisa Kleypas
The Empty Mirror--James Lincoln Collier
Saying Grace--Beth Gutcheon
Poison--Chris Wooding

MARCH
One Little Sin--Liz Carlyle
To Tame a Texan's Heart--Jodi Thomas
Griffin's Castle--Jenny Nimmo
Don't Say a Word--Barbara Freethy
Miracle's Boys--Jacqueline Woodson

APRIL
Fat Chance--Deborah Blumenthal
At Twilight--Maggie Shayne
Sean Donovan--Lori Wick
Blue Christmas--Mary Kay Andrews
Palace of Mirrors--Margaret Peterson Haddix
Salvation in Death--J. D. Robb
Promises in Death--J. D. Robb
From Dead to Worse--Charlaine Harris
Star Bright--Catherine Anderson
Stories for the Extreme Teen's Heart--compiled by Alice Gray
Only with a Highlander--Janet Chapman
Under a Lucky Star--Diane Farr
A Family Christmas--Carrie Alexander

MAY
Heart Fate--Robin D. Owens
Alone in the Ice World--MaryAnn Easley
The Revelation--Beverly Lewis
The Gunslinger--Stephen King
Hattie Big Sky--Kirby Larson
The Drawing of the Three--Stephen King
Night of the Loving Dead--Casey Daniels
Jessie--Lori Wick
Stuart Little--E. B. White

JUNE
Tribute--Nora Roberts
Magic's Child--Justine Larbalestier
Living with the Dead--Kelley Armstrong
Men of the Otherworld--Kelley Armstrong
Fearless Fourteen--Janet Evanovich
Waiting for Normal--Leslie Connor
What I Saw and How I Lied--Judy Blundell
Ashes to Ashes--Tami Hoag (audiobook)
Dead Over Heels--Charlaine Harris
Savvy--Ingrid Law
Christmas Letters--Debbie Macomber
Lavender Morning--Jude Deveraux
The Waste Lands--Stephen King
Tall, Dark, and Texan--Jodi Thomas
Once Smitten, Twice Shy--Lori Wilde
Power Play--Deirdre Martin
Everything She Ever Wanted--Ann Rule

JULY
Princess of the Midnight Ball--Jessica Day George
Under the Banner of Heaven--Jon Krakauer (audiobook)
Grave Sight--Charlaine Harris
An Ice Cold Grave--Charlaine Harris
After Midnight--Teresa Medeiros
Numbering All the Bones--Ann Rinaldi
Charlotte's Choice--Cathleen Twomey
The Christmas Hope--Donna Van Liere
How to Ditch Your Fairy--Justine Larbalestier
Heart Quest--Robin D. Owens
Vision in White--Nora Roberts
Swept Away--Candace Camp (audiobook)
The Lost World--Michael Crichton, read by Anthony Heald
Book of a Thousand Days--Shannon Hale
Lock and Key--Sarah Dessen
The Summoning--Kelley Armstrong
The Princess and the Hound--Mette Ivie Harrison

AUGUST
Grave Surprise--Charlaine Harris
The Time Traveler's Wife--Audrey Niffenegger
Love Is Blind--Lynsay Sands
A Curse Dark as Gold--Elizabeth C. Bunce
Finger Lickin' Fifteen--Janet Evanovich
The Awakening--Kelley Armstrong

SEPTEMBER
Runaway--Bobbi Smith
Guardian of Honor--Robin D. Owens
Catching Fire--Suzanne Collins
The Runaway McBride--Elizabeth Thornton
This Lullaby--Sarah Dessen
The Darkest Whisper--Gena Showalter
Red's Hot Honky-Tonk Bar--Pamela Morsi
The Forgotten Man--Robert Crais, read by James Daniels
Christmas Revels--Mary Jo Putney
Bathtub Voyages: Tales of Adventure--Scott Foresman
The Big Blank Piece of Paper: Artists at Work--Scott Foresman
Personal Demon--Kelley Armstrong
A Babe in Ghostland--Lisa Cach
The Honorable Midwife--Lilian Darcy
Garden Spells--Sarah Addison Allen
True Believer--Nicholas Sparks

OCTOBER
Tennyson--Lesley M. M. Blume
Stolen Children--Peg Kehret
Breathe: A Ghost Story--Cliff McNish
Impossible--Nancy Werlin
The Miss America Family--Julianna Baggott
Trouble in High Heels--Christina Dodd
Tongue in Chic--Christina Dodd
Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girld: Cooties! (Issues 9-12)--Roman Dirge
Danger in a Red Dress--Christina Dodd
Storm of Visions--Christina Dodd
Baby Be Mine--Diane Fanning
Conard County: Cowboy Comes Home--Rachel Lee
Simply Perfect--Mary Balogh
Storm of Shadows--Christina Dodd
The Glass Castle--Jeannette Walls

NOVEMBER
You're So Vein--Christine Warren
Bed of Roses--Nora Roberts
Bitsy's Bait & BBQ--Pamela Morsi
Chesapeake Blue--Nora Roberts, read by James Daniels
Hard Day's Night--Katie McAlister
Assignment: Rescue, An Autobiography--Varian Fry
When the Duke Returns--Eloisa James
This Duchess of Mine--Eloisa James
Zenda: A New Dimension--Ken Petti and John Amodeo
Just the Way You Are--Barbara Freethy
A Christmas Scandal--Jane Goodger
Hapily After All--Laura C. Stevenson
Destined for an Early Grave--Jeaniene Frost
I'll Be Home for Christmas--Linda Lael Miller et al
The Millionaires--Brad Meltzer, read by Tony Goldwyn
They Cage the Animals at Night--Jennings Michael Burch
Sooner or Later--Debbie Macomber

DECEMBER
Land of the Living--Nicci French, read by Anne Flosnik
Lover's Knot--Emilie Richards
Secondhand Bride--Linda Lael Miller
If Wishes Were Horses--Anne McCaffrey
Jumbo: This Being the True Story of the Greatest Elephant in the World--Paul Chambers
Dead and Gone--Charlaine Harris
Stormbreaker--Anthony Horowitz
Call Me Princess--Tomoko Taniguchi
Tall, Dark, and Dangerous--Catherine Anderson, Christina Dodd, and Susan Sizemore
A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity--Bill O'Reilly
Gifts of Love--Kay Hooper and Lisa Kleypas
Amelia Earhart: Adventure in the Sky--Francene Sabin
Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller--Sarah Miller
White Witch, Black Curse--Kim Harrison
The Rescue--Nicholas Sparks, read by Mary Beth Hurt and John Belford Lloyd
Holidays Are Hell--Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Marjorie M. Liu, and Vicki Pettersson
Sucker Bet--Erin McCarthy
The Better Part of Darkness--Kelly Gay
Mistletoe & Magic--Lisa Cach, Stobie Piel, Lynsay Sands, and Amy Elizabeth Saunders

157 Books; 46,439Pages; Average page per book: 296 pages

Somewhere I'll Find You, by Lisa Kleypas

Ordinarily, Lisa Kleypas is one of my go-to authors for romance novels set more or less in Britain's Regency era. This book, however, had so many problems that I can't actually say I loved it. I wanted to love it; I wasn't bored by it; but it just didn't hold together when everything was said and done.

The premise of the book is quite interesting: Julia Hargate and Damon Savage were married as children to fulfill their parents' respective needs: Damon's family needed money, and Julia's father wanted her to be a duchess. Julia, being a 21st-century heroine, bitterly resents her father's machinations and so runs away to become an actress. Meanwhile, Damon has been searching for Julia to address the issue of their marriage, but he has a mistress who claims to be pregnant with his baby, and he's deep in lust with the hottest actress in town, our own Julia under a stage name.

Kleypas's setup is flawed from the start, because she herself seems uncertain about whether or not this arranged marriage would hold up in a 19th-century court of law. Since the characters also seem to waffle back and forth on the issue, the average reader is likely to be thoroughly confused. The solution that Julia is presented with toward the end of the book has little impact because several hundred pages of uncertainty are summarily dismissed with a firm, unequivocal answer. It just doesn't work. Kleypas should have given the reader some insight into her research on the issue, for clarity's sake. If she didn't research it, she should have, because this detail was integral to her plot.

While Julia is a thoroughly modern heroine, Damon really ought to have been used in a medieval romance. Once he figures out that Jessica the actress is Julia his wife, he spends the rest of the book ranting about how she needs to give up her career and focus on him. He was so positively primeval that I really began to wonder if his name was actually Gaston. Julia and Damon allegedly fall in love, but the circumstances of this development are extremely murky, because they never DO anything together. What is the basis of this great romance? He hates her career and she can't imagine life without the theatre in it. The solution to this conflict is eminently predictable and completely unsatisfying, despite Kleypas's best efforts to force readers to accept it. It just doesn't work.

Yet another flaw is the "other man," Julia's boss at the theatre. It's a big mistake for an author to make another character more compelling than the heroine. I spent much of the book waiting for Kleypas to turn Logan into the real hero of the book, and while it seemed like that might happen, Kleypas opted to pick the humdrum route. This is clearly a case of the characters and plot wanting to go one way, with the author forcing them down a different path, much against their will. Logan's devotion to the theatre and his pragmatic approach to love and life invited a turnaround in the name of love. His interests and Julia's dovetail perfectly, and it would have been far more satisfying for Julia to have humanized Logan through her love and their mutual interests. Logan made such an impact before Damon even showed up in the novel that he shouldn't have been thrust to the side. Kleypas could save the situation by giving Logan a book and true love of his own, but the likelihood that it will still feel forced, because readers are still likely to think that this book didn't end as it should have. Alternately, Kleypas could have let Logan have Julia and come up with another heroine for Damon, but Damon just didn't hold up as a hero in his own right; he was more a type. All the ingredients are there, but the execution fell short.

Just for the heck of it, can we have a moratorium on the use of Savage for the hero's name? It's been done to death, done unto cliche. Let it go, already, authors!

Finally, and this actually has very little to do with Kleypas, I deplore the lack of capable editing at most publishing houses. While I would like to believe my favorite authors are cognizant of basic rules of grammar and turns of phrase, I know that that's why we have editors. I'm especially disappointed by the number of times the pronouns I and me are used incorrectly. That's Grammar 101, people. And when there's a mistake on the back of the book (in this case, combining the heroine's real first name with her assumed last name), it's even worse.

I almost always rate books an 8 or a 9, but I give this one a 6. I'll always remember it, but more for what it could have been than for what it actually was.

Plagiarism in the Romance World Again!

Since it came out lo, these many years ago that Janet Dailey had cribbed entire chunks of Nora Roberts' books, I have not bought another Janet Dailey book or allowed her books to be in my house. I've been very regretful about that, because there were some of Dailey's books that I really liked (mostly in her Harlequin Presents Americana collection).

Well, now it turns out that historical romance author Cassie Edwards has done something similar, although her choice of material to copy is much older. Edwards has plagiarized material for her western romances from some text published early in the 20th century. Her publishing house stood by her at first, denying that it was plagiarism, but as the details came out, had to admit that one of their bestselling authors had, indeed, copied entire passages from this older source.

I've seen the text, and it's clearly copied, right down to the word choices. Yes, she made minor variations here and there, but an author of her experience could have not doubt that what she was doing was cheating. Unlike Dailey, who had the chutzpah to copy one of the bestselling novelists in the world and then be kind of huffy about it when caught (including giving a throwaway "apology" that managed to offend many who read it), Edwards ripped her material from a more obscure source, and must have been fairly confident that she would not be caught out.

Unfortunately, the publishing world is smaller than ever due to the internet, and people have access to a lot more material than ever before. It's just crazy to think you can get away with this type of thing in this day and age.

I'm deeply grateful that I've never been a big Edwards fan, having read only one or two of her books. Nevertheless, she will join Dailey on my list of authors who, under no circumstances, will be allowed in my house. What a pity.

If His Kiss Is Wicked, by Jo Goodman

IF HIS KISS IS WICKED
Jo Goodman
ISBN: 0-8217-7777-7
Historical Romance
Book #08-006

Emma Hathaway has made a comfortable home for herself with her uncle, Sir Arthur Vega, and his daughter, the lovely Marisol, by making herself useful in her uncle's painting studio and being something of a companion/servant to her cousin. When Emma is asked to meet with Marisol's lover, the result is nearly fatal: Emma is kidnapped and beaten severely. Battered from her ordeal and in despair at her family's disbelief that she is still a target, Emma seeks help from the mysterious Restell Gardner.

Restell has made a name for himself by helping people solve problems of scandalous proportion. With a combination of cunning and finesse, and an ability to barter favors for information and other intangibles, Restell's unique skills are oddly suited to resolving Emma's issues. As he gets to know Emma, Restell finds himself captivating by her dry sense of humor, her beauty, and her strength. Amidst attempted murder and romantic intrigue, Restell and Emma are drawn into a passion that threatens to consume them.

Jo Goodman always writes with sureness and sensuality, and her talent does not fail to keep things simmering in this romantic mystery. The relationship between Emma and Restell is beautifully depicted, and

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the fact that they are married halfway into the book gives the romance an extra shimmer of tenderness. Much of the charm of this book is in the development of the trust and affection between the hero and heroine, and for these particular characters, nothing less than matrimony would have been acceptable. Being husband and wife allows Restell and Emma the freedom to explore their growing attraction without guilt or furtive measures tainting their pleasure in each other.

As always, Goodman's supporting cast are three-dimensional, fully believable characters in their own right. Goodman is skilled at layering information in her plots and then peeling it away in just the right increments to move the story forward without revealing too much, too soon. Readers will realize early on that nothing is as it seems in the Vega household, but red herrings and a complex plot will keep readers guessing right up until the final chapter. Marisol, the motherless beauty pampered by her adoring father, is jealous of Emma's closeness to Sir Arthur, yet she depends on Emma to make their lives more comfortable. Sir Arthur, crippled and unable to paint as he used to, relies on Emma to manage his social life as well as his artistic commitments. Marisol's fiance, Neven, was once attracted to Emma before he settled on her cousin, but his management of Sir Arthur's finances is suspect. Restell's family, whom we've met in previous books, are as warm and engaging as ever.

IF HIS KISS IS WICKED is yet another treasure from autobuy author Jo Goodman. Although the title is a bit random, the story delivers everything Goodman's readers have come to expect from her. This book is definitely a keeper.